Great Xio Expansion

[Xio]

Hello! With the Anglian conflict in Aurelia starting to ramp up, it's time Xio threw its hat into the ring.
I have already spoken to other members of Aurelia about this expansion idea and its plan and how it relates to the other events going on the continent. As it involves a pre-existing nation on the continent, perhaps its best to begin with a synopsis of the start of the expansion rather than rattle off numbers and names.

As tensions come to a boil over on the Zaxar-CDF border, Azuria has launched a surprise invasion of Anatea with the backing of Great Anglia. As Azuria is the aggressor, attacking an Aurelian League member, Declaration 13 of the Aurelian League's constitution is triggered and all members of the league are expected to aid Anatea's defence against Azuria. Xio, ever the dutiful ally, promises Anatea active ground support and declares war on Azuria. Several of Xio's pre-trained armed divisions are sent off around the continent along with a significant portion of its armoured vehicles to assist Anatea on the front lines. The only remaining active military divisions left in Xio are along the river at the militarised border with Sefesia outside of Sefesia's artillery striking distance. According to Xioan knowledge of Sefesia's military capabilities, Great Xio is in no danger of a surprised invasion by Sefesia.

What the Xioans don't know is that Sefesia over the last year have been slowly and secretly importing Anglian rocket artillery systems in cargo ships that had originated in Azania, assumed to be food imports. Rocket artillery systems that have a far greater range than Sefesia's. After only a week of Xioan divisions entering and integrating into Anatean military command the Xioan-Sefesian border is ignited all at once as camouflaged and half-buried MLRS fired from Sefesia obliterate Great Xio's armoured divisions across the river and begin a full-scale invasion of the Republic of Nanhong within Great Xio. Further north along the Xioan-Proncawi'chi border, corrupt warlords have been bribed by the Sefesians to allow their military to flank around major rivers* and begin a blitzkrieg invasion into the Kingdom of Leho. With its border army almost entirely wiped out and unable to bring its armies in Anatea back home due to the arrival of Anglian warships from Mesothalassa and Azuria's own navy, the Xioans are forced to retreat deep into their country as they begin to scrounge up an army to hopefully push back the surprisingly well-armed Sefesians.

*Rivers still exist of course, but there are numerous bridges along the Xioan-Proncawi'chi border, and the rivers are far narrower with slower currents making them easier to cross.

So, how will this expansion actually function?
Firstly, this expansion will be in two parts as Xio by the end will be annexing both Sefesia and Proncawi'chi (both will be merged together into a reserved territory space on the map) as retribution for the war and to dismantle Sefesia's apartheid slave regime (and in the process illegalise slavery within Xio as well) and bring order to the warlords of Proncawi'chi as an act of vengence for allowing the Sefesians to move through their lands. The first part of the expansion will end with both nations occupied, however only Sefesia will be annexed initially, as the second part will focus more-so on Proncawi'chi and the reconstruction of all 3 nations and their integration into the Empire. As Sefesia is first, let's start with them:

Democratic Republic of Sefesia (part 1)

Population: 28,000,000 (2 points)
Land Area: 227,600 km^2 (1 point)
GDP Per Capita: $6,100 (1 point)
Sefesia is an ex-colony of Iverica which was primarily settled and handled by the Iverican-speaking Celtiberians (known in Iverica as the Sefes) who wished to flee from Iverican rule but did not wish to settle with the Vasqqans in their Stillian diaspora colonies. Instead, they went as far south as their ships would carry them in the late 1500s, settling in the inhospitable Aurelian Wastes proclaiming their own Sefes nation state. The natives of Sefesia, Xi tribes that settled in the region under the Xisekan Empire, were enslaved and forced into plantations to farm the riverbanks for cotton and other cash crops. However, with dwindling profits and continuous slave revolts, slavery was abolished just before the First Aurelian War in the 1800s. The Sefesians (known at the time as the Republic of Sephezia) were defeated in the 1st Aurelian War, having been allies of the 2nd Aurelian War. The military at the time comprising many of the native revolutionaries that originally brought about abolition, the original slave-owning elites retook power in a brief yet bloody civil war, declaring the Democratic Republic of Sefesia in 1822.

Although slavery remained illegal, the nation became increasingly apartheid with a ruling white class and a servant/working "red" class (as the White Sefesians would call it). Several attempts at reforms, coups, and revolutions have all ended in failure and only caused the state to tighten its grip over its population. Nevertheless, Sefesia has wormed itself into TRIDENT as a loosely cooperative member giving light aid to its member states in times of hardship however has largely abstained from voting in recent decades as the current leader, Abararban Roig, has started to become senile and paranoid with no one in his government brave enough to stop him from making rash decisions (this invasion being one of them).

With a GDP per capita and a population greater than Xio's along with a military supplied by the Anglians (although not as a direct ally and more-so as two nations with similar geopolitical interests) at face value it appears as though Great Xio would have no chance to defeat the Sefesians. However, Sefesia has two critical weaknesses: its racial inequality and its corruption. Sefesia is still an apartheid state, and an unstable one at that. The White ruling class population has seen dwindling birth-rates for the past two decades and revolutionary activity amongst the Red working class continues to rise. Sefesia is too scared to use its working class in warfare out of fear that they'd be arming their own killers, leaving only an aging small proportion of the population (~7,000,000) able to fight. The second Achilles heel of Sefesia is its corruption, much of the money it had put aside for hardware and software for its military has already been spent on luxury goods and riverside manors. Once the Anglian equipment is burned through and supplies can no longer reach Sefesia, their military would be grinded to dust if Xio can maintain its own supplies from Aurelian League members.

The war against Sefesia would be especially brutal, as the Sefesians would be pillaging and destroying entire settlements in hopes of bringing Xio's population under heel as a new labour pool to keep their dwindling poor afloat for another couple decades. The first part of the expansion will end with the Sefesian government forced to sign a non-negotiable peace with the White elite losing their special privileges as their nation is absorbed into the Great Xio Empire. Proncawi'chi by this time would have also been occupied as their warlords quickly devolve into in-fighting over whose fault it is that they're being invaded. Speaking of which...

Republic of Proncawi'chi (part 2)
 (funny non-rectangular flag)
Population: 38,000,000 (2 points)
Land Area: 321,300km^2 (2 points)
GDP Per Capita: $3,100 (0 points)
Proncawi'chi up until modern times was quite a close ally of the Xiohane, having a mutual distrust of the Leho Kingdom before it was annexed by Xio and helped contain Sefesia from expanding further. Proncawi'chi is a primarily Rarámuri (Tarahumaran people) though the Xi-Le Syrbotic dialect is a common lingua franca for the numerous tribes in the region. It was only after the Second Aurelian War and its oil industry collapsed after its wells dried up did the nation see a serious decline in wealth. The numerous clans that once collaborated soon began to point fingers on who f*cked up the country and soon the nation collapsed into a civil war amongst rival clans. With the nation still divided amongst competing clans, Sefesia took advantage of their divided nature and began to buy loyalty in the region leading to them aiding Sefesia's invasion of Xio.

Although Proncawi'chi would have a largely passive role in the conflict, upon Great Xio's counter offensive into Sefesia's lands, the clans along the border will begin to attack Xio followed shortly by rival clans attacking them in moments of weakness. Seeing Proncawi'chi as nothing more than a liability and seeing other powers in Aurelia dividing up Anglian allies amongst themselves in their own growing spheres of influence, Xio would also occupy Proncawi'chi under the pretence of bringing order to the Aurelian Wastes and as payback for their cooperation with Sefesia. Actual in-depth RP of Proncawi'chi will come with the occupation as Xio's army (who at this point wants nothing more than to end the war) has to play whack-a-mole with different clans, with the Mountain Lord having to keep morale up all whilst the Empire has to bankroll the reconstruction of three entire nations (with AL and TRIDENT support... hopefully). Until reconstruction is "complete", and the occupation is finalised, Proncawi'chi won't be officially annexed into Great Xio on the map.

...part 3?
This won't be the end of expansions with Xio, as although the nation would've been bloodied and broken over the war, growing sentiments of a Syrbotium Federation would begin to grow out of this victory amongst the government and public. Afterall, if Xio can conquer two nations ""alone"", why not more? Of course, between these expansions and future conquests Xio's economy will certainly have to be improved which would be my focus moving forward. I can't give any date for "part 3" as post-Anglian wars I'll be shrinking my RP scale down to individual dominions in the empire - such as the royal family in Nagaxo, economic migrants from Velaheria in a rebuilt Leho, and short stories on the changing landscape of Sefesia and Proncawi'chi post-annexation - and so I won't be as worried over the timescales involved.

So, what do you think?


edit: The Empire of Great Xio's stats at the end of part 2 are as follow:
Total population: ~74.5 million
Total land area: 1,332,900km^2
GDP Per Capita unknown, probably around $3,200 after reconstruction in phase 2.

Edited October 8, 2022 by Xio (see edit history)

[Orioni]

Aurelian League is gearing up for action. How exciting! And future Xio is going to be thick.

Sefesia already exists, so that doesn't count as an expansion. We do need some more information on that place. There are only some bits and pieces mentioned on RP stories. But I couldn't find anything coherent on Sefesia, and the above information is completely new as well.

Proncawi'chi is a large area. How would poor Sefesia with 28M people invade the large Proncawi'chi with 38M people? This seems to be setup to fail. If so, that would work as part of the counteroffensive in the Anglia conflict.

The screenshot also shows Indeland, which is not on the map or mentioned anywhere else. What is this?

Your text mentions the Leho Kingdom a couple of times. From research, I can see this is a province within Xio.

[Xio]

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Sefesia already exists, so that doesn't count as an expansion. We do need some more information on that place. There are only some bits and pieces mentioned on RP stories. But I couldn't find anything coherent on Sefesia, and the above information is completely new as well.

The idea is that Sefesia will be converted from a general NPC, which doesn't serve much purpose in-universe other than to carry the past lore of Asgeirra (which is where I've been pulling stuff like Sefesia being a part of TRIDENT from) and turning it into an expansion for Xio. Sefesia will still carry on being Asgeirra's lore NPC and carry its past foreign affairs but it's story as an independent nation will end with Xio eventually annexing it at the end of the war. The information above is new because more information was needed to make it a fully rounded "character" in the story I plan to tell.

 

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Proncawi'chi is a large area. How would poor Sefesia with 28M people invade the large Proncawi'chi with 38M people? This seems to be setup to fail. If so, that would work as part of the counteroffensive in the Anglia conflict.

I should've been more clear on this, sorry. So Proncawi'chi could be said to be very similar to Somalia in the 2000s/2010s (minus the religious extremism) wherein the country has collapsed into a failed state when its oil industry collapsed (perhaps sometime in the 80s/90s). The country has become fragmented with the individual clans and tribes fighting amongst one another, acting as their own separate tiny nations. Sefesia has bribed and coerced/threatened several of these clans in the west and south of Proncawi'chi into becoming allies of Sefesia, and will be using them to cross into Xio.

 

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The screenshot also shows Indeland, which is not on the map or mentioned anywhere else. What is this?

Indeland is a reference-only NPC in Aurelia. It doesn't exist fully in canon and thus isn't on the official map. We Aurelians got together to figure out where a bunch of these reference-only NPCs are for our own personal maps, so when we create maps for RP use there aren't a bunch of blank spots between nations. Don't worry about it, it'll have zero effect on this RP.

 

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Your text mentions the Leho Kingdom a couple of times. From research, I can see this is a province within Xio.

That is correct, the Empire of Great Xio is divided into several dominions of differing autonomy. Sefesia will be directly invading the Republic of Nanhong and the southern half of the Kingdom of Xio, whereas the flanking army passing through Proncawi'chi will be invading the Kingdom of Leho.


(@Orioni)

[Orioni]

So if I understand it correctly, you will:

1. Annex Sefesia by defeating it in part 1 (for 4 points);
2. annex Proncawi'chi by defending it in part 2 (another 4 points); and
3. found the Syrbotium Federation in part 3.

A well-thought-out plan. Let's do this.